1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document management apparatus, a document management system, and a document management method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In file systems of Windows, Linux, or the like, files are managed such that one version is assigned to one file. In such a file system, when one file is edited by a plurality of users in collaboration, it is common to divide the original file into a plurality of files and assign different file names to the respective files so that versions can be managed by file names. Some document management systems have a capability of managing a plurality of versions for one file (document). In such a document management system, first, a user declares to start editing by checking out a registered document, and checking in the document when the editing is ended. In this document management system, versions are managed such that when a user performs check-out and check-in for a document, a new version is additionally registered for this document. Such a document management system usually provides also a function of viewing a version history and downloading old versions.
To transfer data from a file system in which versions are managed by file names to a document management system having the version management capability described above, a user first registers a file of an oldest version and then performs check-out and check-in repeatedly as many times as there are files. To avoid such a troublesome operation, a technique has been proposed. In a technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-316715, monitoring is performed to detect an occurrence of copying of a file from a file system which does not have the version management capability to a file system having the version management capability. After such copying is detected, each time a file is updated, the updated file is automatically registered as a new version.
However, in the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-316715, it is not allowed to register a plurality of files as a batch via a single operation. In this technique, information is not managed about users who updated respective files, and thus it is impossible to know, on the document management system, which document was updated by which user.